Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette was born an archduchess of Austria and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. She met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two months her junior and a child prodigy, at the imperial summer residence in Vienna, when she was seven.
About Marie Antoinette in brief
Marie Antoinette was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen. During the Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker. On 21 September 1792, the monarchy was abolished and Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. Two days later she was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed, also by guilotine, on the Place de la Révolution. Maria Antonia renounced her rights to her Habsburg domains and on 19 April she was married by proxy to the Dauphin of France, Ferdinand de Berry. She died in 1793 and was buried in the Cimetière de la Compiègne in Paris. She is buried next to her husband, Louis XVI, and her eldest son, Louis XV, in the Chateau d’Orléans, near Paris. Her husband is buried at the Château de Saint-Germain-du-Richelieu, where he is buried with his wife, the Duchess of Alençon, and their two children, Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVII.
She had a difficult but ultimately loving relationship with her mother, who referred to her as “the little Madame Antoine’’. She met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two months her junior and a child prodigy, at the imperial summer residence in Vienna, when she was seven. She learned to play the harp, the harpsichord and the flute, and sang during the family’s evening gatherings, as she had a beautiful voice. She also excelled at dancing, had “exquisite poise, and loved dolls,” and had a lifelong close relationship with sister, Maria Carolina, who was three years older, and with whom she had an close relationship. She could not write correctly in German or in any language commonly used at court, such as French or Italian, and conversations with her were stilted. She married Louis XV on 7 February 1770, formally requesting a hand in marriage. On 14 May she met her husband at the edge of the forest of Compucinian, France, with her brother Ferdinand Ferdinand standing for her standing in for her husband. She and her husband were married in August 1770 in the church of Saint-Jean-de-Laurier, near the village of Compiégne, France. She later had two children with Louis XV: Louis XVIII and Marie Antonia Josepha Johanna.
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This page is based on the article Marie Antoinette published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 09, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
